


Lost At Sea And I'm Having A Time

by whaleofatime



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: As Jason plays fetch and has a crisis on the way, Bruce accidentally gets thrown overboard, Canon-Typical Violence, Family Bonding, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Of being lost at sea, Pirates Casefic, Topical, What follows is a not very harrowing account, the bahamas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26710465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whaleofatime/pseuds/whaleofatime
Summary: On a mission with Jason to deal with pirates in the Caribbean, Bruce finds himself ejected overboard and accidentally lost at sea. Being a castaway gives Bruce ample time to indulge in self-discovery and survivorman-ing, as Jason boats across Pit-green waters in search of this dumb, fine man.Or, things go incredibly wrong for Bruce and Jason while out at sea, but with help from a dedicated boat captain, The Fellowship Of The Rings, and banana-leaf-pants, they're actually unstoppable.
Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 20
Kudos: 94
Collections: Batfam Big Bang 2020





	1. This Man, Lost At Sea

Pulling a disappearing act is something Bruce _should_ be good at; he’s had years and years of practice by now sinking into the night. Keeping secrets is pretty important in being invisible too, which is why the files outlining the increasingly severe piracy problems in the Caribbean are so heavily encrypted they may as well not exist. After all, at any moment any of his children could be using the Batcomputer to do anything from figuring out how to topple a corrupt government remotely to buying an unreasonable number of chew toys for Ace, and given that they’re all so ridiculously nosy, a security breach is more a question of _when_ rather than _if_.

Nosiness is a good trait for vigilante detectives, but it makes it hard to work covertly without tipping anyone off. International travel isn’t a good idea for anyone this deep into a pandemic, and while Bruce Wayne being an ass and swanning around the Bahamas in a yacht is pretty believable as far as cover stories go, he’s not keen to subject anyone else to the sort of vitriol that behaviour will garner.

So the plan is simple, with as few moving parts as possible. Three, maybe four days tops being loud and visible on his biggest, ugliest yacht in the hopes that pirates will decide to come after him, and then maybe a couple of days after that to dismantle the bulk of the operation after he’s tracked them back to their base. There’s less of a chance of failure than his usual work, but it still leaves him feeling uneasy.

It’s a long way away from Gotham, and he’s not exactly excited to leave, but his comfort’s not more important than a greater good. The League really does need to sort out a presence for Central America though, and that goes on his notes for the mission too.

So he had planned in secrecy so complete not even Alfred was informed, because Alfred can be notoriously casual in his flagrant betrayal if he disagrees with Bruce’s plans. He’s skulking around the cave at 11 AM on a Tuesday when most of the family is either at work or asleep, and half an hour later he’s climbing into a Beemer, ready to roll out. He has a moment of smug certainty that he’s gotten away with this before the door to the passenger’s side is ripped open, and Jason climbs in with a little battered suitcase, a pair of aviators that reflect metallic blue, a genuinely heinous red wig, and what can only be described as a noxious Hawaiian shirt.

Bruce doesn’t think he’s ever seen a shade of yellow so bright, but it’s now imprinted on the back of his eyeballs, so that’s that.

“Jason, what are you doing?”

Bruce doesn’t even know if he’s referring to Jason’s presence, his outfit, or his hair (oh god, his _hair_ ).

“Tim was supposed to be the one to tail your ass on this mission, but he’s still way too concussed after last week’s fight with Clayface so he got pulled out.” Jason chucks his suitcase to the backseat and pulls his seatbelt on, still fastidious about traffic safety despite it all. “Then Dick wanted to sub in but Blüdhaven needs him more than you do right now. So they called in the big guns to look out for you, and when I get back everyone’s gonna owe me favours. Sounds like a damn good deal for a week of work.”

Favours are a currency way more important than cash within this family, but Bruce struggles to see how a few favours is worth a few days in the company of a man you loathe.

(All right, _loathe_ may be a bit dramatic, but it’s how Bruce feels about himself in reference to Jason, and it’s mind-boggling that a boy can wake up in a coffin and be driven to lunacy by the Pit and still, somehow, end up in this car with him in an ugly shirt and an offer of support).

He decides against asking if Jason’s really going to be all right floating in a sea of green in bad company, and doesn’t make Jason leave. It’s the rule of things; if he fails to out-sneak his children, he must deal with their demands, because it’s the only way he could get them to agree to his more paranoid measures in return.

So Bruce makes an effort not to think about it, in spite of himself, and gets the car in gear.

It really is looking like a damn good deal for a week of work; with good company, how badly can things go wrong?

  
  


-

Karma really wants to make him eat his words.

Years and years on the job, near-death experiences well past a hundred by now, active involvement in everything from petty theft to intergalactic peace missions, and it’s a little incredible that this is somehow the first time he’s been held at gunpoint while wearing the skimpiest pair of Speedos he could force up his thighs.

A billion dollars for a dressing gown, Bruce thinks but very carefully doesn’t say to the pirates who have commandeered the yacht. It’s all part of the plan, minus his questionable outfit.

Whoever’s manning the screens at the Cave is likely having a grand old laugh right now, but if it’s Stephanie he hopes she realises that he is using her trick with waterproof concealer and translucent powder to hide his scars, and it’s working like a charm. The Speedo was meant to feed the paparazzis that are currently stalking him in their little fishing boats that are weighed down with telephoto lenses, and L’Oreal 24 Hour Max Hold Extra Dewy Outlast! Long-Wearing Concealer makes him look happily whole from 40 yards.

He hadn’t expected the pirates to come on the _one_ day he had planned to parade in front of the paps, but luck is a lady and it looks like Bruce just will not be getting lucky tonight.

The leader of the gang is yelling at the captain, clearly assuming Bruce cannot speak Spanish and isn’t worth speaking to regardless, which is fair. The leader is also standing far, far too close for a man without a facemask in these sickly times, and Bruce makes a show of tripping over nothing and landing in between Pirate Captain and Captain Luis, building space in between them. Half a dozen vaccine trials down, he’s as close to confidently immune as he can be, so he just strikes an entirely embarrassing pose and grins up at Mr. Pirate. “Sorry, sorry, not every day you get hijacked. Listen, you,” he waves at the assembled gang of ne’er-do-wells, “take my stuff,” he waves to indicate every gaudy expensive thing not nailed down in this frankly ghastly ship, “and leave us alone, okay?”

It’s tempting fate to be extra loud and extra slow like he’s talking to somebody extra dumb, but eyes on him are eyes off civilians, so that’s what he does.

It’s the point of information-gathering with the entire force of his Bruce Wayne Billionaire Playboy personality after all, even if Jason hasn’t stopped mocking him relentlessly for his outfits and table manners and affect (and so on and so forth) every time he breaks into the Master Cabin to help cover up Bruce’s many, many back scars. 

The Pirate Captain appears to not appreciate being spoken to like a concussed toddler, and backhands Bruce right across the cheek. Bruce dutifully sets his tooth in so that he gets a dramatically split lip, and tries to look suitably cowed as he wonders about the man’s hand hygiene. Where is Jason, anyways? The standard response in this situation would be to evacuate civilians to safety, and even if the captain is currently stuck with Bruce, hopefully the stewards and the cooks are being shown to the panic room. It’s only in doubt because it’s a Thursday, and Thursdays are Jimmy-the-steward-boy’s day off. What that means is that Jason is likely in his bunk listening to audiobooks while half-asleep, and if it’s the Lord of the Rings and Jason’s hit a particularly engaging part, they could be firing cannons on deck and he wouldn’t hear.

It’s still fine, probably. Jason’s good at showing up when you least expect him.

There’s enough pride and bull-headedness in Bruce’s veins that he still officially objects to having back-up whenever he follows a case abroad, but times like these it’s really hard to feel anything but grateful that his children don’t trust him not to get himself killed in suitably dramatic ways as soon as he leaves Gotham. It’s even easier to feel glad that he and Jason have gotten good enough with each other that laid up on the ground of his yacht with blood in his mouth, Bruce knows that everything’s going to be alright. 

“Please,” he says, and his voice trills like a well-trained bird, “please don’t hurt me. I have so much money, if that’s what you want. Somebody just needs to call my PA, we can do a transfer right now.” Oh, good, the captain is slowly backing away while all eyes are on Bruce and his tiny swimwear.

Thank you, Stephanie, for recommending a concealer that doesn’t even smudge as he dramatically cowers on the ground. The captain’s taken shelter behind the big outdoor dining table, a sturdy, immovable beast made of aluminium, and Bruce has a semi-circle of reasonably menacing men he could potentially incapacitate without _definitely_ dying. Things are looking up already.

Pirate Captain (Pirate King? Pirate Lord? Pirate Admiral? Who knows how a hierarchy works for the lawless, after all) is barking orders for one of his men to handcuff Bruce and move him over to their boat, because this is now a kidnapping-for-ransom situation. In casual dress, Bruce wouldn’t have minded it much; there’s enough untraceable kit in his average pair of slacks to get him out of most situations.

Again, the cursed Speedos are hugely, disproportionately problematic despite their actual size. At least there’s the tracker and the lockpicks in his watch, because thankfully no one questions why a rich man who is mostly nude would be decked out in a fantastically expensive watch.

A gangly boy who can’t possibly be much older than 20 hauls him to his feet and starts to tie his hands behind his back, which is fine. The boy also deftly unbuckles Bruce’s watch and sleight-of-hands it away, presumably into the pocket of his beaten up jeans, and that is decidedly less fine. Still, as long as the tracker remains in his vicinity, it won’t take much effort for him to be found.

Things are still on track, even if they’ve gone off the rails an alarming number of times since he woke up this morning and nicked his face while shaving for the first time in, oh, a decade? More? Hopefully there’ll be a sack or something he can fashion into a tunic on the pirate boat; he doesn’t imagine this entire ordeal will outlast his long-lasting concealer, and given that the yacht’s currently bobbing in the ocean somewhere between Nassau and Port-au-Prince, help’s not far away (so long as Jason has also called the Coast Guard and is not still in his bunk, listening to Gandalf telling an overlong story).

It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine, until it’s not.

Honestly, Bruce takes worker well-being very seriously, whether it’s the COO of the Hong Kong branch of WE or the tired cab driver who inadvertently helped the Bat on an undercover case at 3:30 AM one morning. Fair pay, fair working conditions, every benefit that’s the industry standard and a few that he secretly encouraged the unions to demand. It’s a point of pride that people who work for him enjoy it, and it’s a way Bruce Wayne can help people in a way that Batman can’t even dream of.

It’s important that people who work for him are treated well; them becoming a little protective over him when some journo gets particularly nasty on Twitter is frankly rather sweet.

It’s significantly Less Okay that when they meet him in real life, ‘a little protective’ becomes ‘Captain Luis, seeing his bumbling dim-witted but ultimately not a bad guy boss getting carted away by pirates, finds strength from deep within himself to pick up a chair, start screaming, and try to bumrush half a dozen heavily armed men’. 

Time slows down in times of crisis, thank god. Jason’s still nowhere to be seen, and reality narrows to Bruce running through every possible thing he could conceivably do to keep Luis safe. In the first fraction of a second, a trademark Bruce Wayne clumsy stumble is discarded as an option; two of the pirates already have their guns up. He doesn’t have smoke bombs or stun grenades or any of his million gadgets, and his hands are tied (literally _and_ metaphorically), but playing dumb and letting Luis get shot to preserve his identity doesn’t even feature as an option. 

And so, half a second after Luis starts his war cry, cracked voice and all, Bruce is actively working to dislocate his thumb to get out of his bindings, weight tipped forward in the hope that he can body slam half the men to the ground before they can get to their guns. 

It doesn’t work; he gets shot in place of Luis, what feels like a clean through-and-through by the hip that _hopefully_ missed anything particularly important. He does manage to bring a couple of the men nearest to him down with a heavy _whumph_ , and little victories are still worth savouring even while lightly bleeding out on the ground. 

He hears a lot of shouting, both from the direction of the pirate boat (reinforcements?) and from the grand double doors that lead to the inside dining room (reinforcements!) but he just keeps moving. Best case scenario, Luis knocked somebody out with one of the absolutely hideous chrome-and-leather chairs before beating a hasty retreat, and now Jason’s tag-teaming in for clean up.

Worst case scenario, he and Luis are about to be killed, and the news might be broken to his family by unflattering pap shots gone viral on Facebook. It’s an unbearable thought, so he doesn’t think, and just keeps moving around like an angry bull intent on sharing his displeasure.

There are a lot of gunshots, and something clips his ear as he knocks another man to the floor. While the pirate groans, Bruce headbutts him unconscious with a helping hand from the metal plates that help hold his skull in one piece. He thinks he hears Jason’s voice, but he knows Jay’s there for _sure_ because no other weapon on Earth seems to crack the air quite like his Jerichos, and it’s like light at the end of a tunnel.

He hopes that Jason’s wearing some manner of face-covering; Bruce Wayne smashing a bunch of skinny pirates to the ground in a feat of great clumsiness and luck is entertaining enough to be acceptable, but a master marksman taking out a horde of sea-faring villains isn’t as likely to come off as normal.

Bruce doesn’t have the breathing room to turn around and check because more pirates are scrambling aboard with their own weight in weaponry, even if in his mind’s eye he imagines that Jason is wearing a pillowcase on his head with holes shot out for the eyes.

What an absurd quantity of guns. The number of ways Bruce hates the damned things is uncountable, and if Jason is actually on deck yelling blue murder in pyjamas, things can tip over from ‘scuffle’ into ‘bloodbath’ real damn quick.

Only one thing for it, then. He rolls away from a well-aimed kick and staggers to his feet, keeping his hands behind his back even though he’s worked his way free already. Pirate Captain man is angrily waving his rifle like he’s never known a day of joy in his life, but shooting Bruce might break the streak.

“Stop, stop!” Bruce shouts, aiming to look as non-threatening as a man who has mowed down a series of pirates can. “You can take me, just don’t hurt my staff.” _Stand down, Jason_ , is implicit, while _stand down, Luis_ , is implored.

It’s enough to get the man to bark for his men to stop shooting, as he tries to grab Bruce by the throat in a presumably threatening manner. This is what you get for modern-day piracy where there’s a lot less rigging and ropes and a lot more outboard engines; his grip strength is laughable, but Bruce gamely pretends to struggle to breathe anyway. 

Pirate Captain hauls Bruce towards the cluster of his men, looking smug before he turns Bruce to let him see the wreckage of the outdoor lounge of the yacht. It’s bullet-riddled and messed up, but this far from the engine and the bridge, the damage is almost exclusively cosmetic. Thankfully Luis seems relatively whole even if he’s got the remains of a chair leg in his hands and a snarl twisting his face, and so does Jason. No pillowcase head-covering, unfortunately, but his steward-boy curly ginger wig is on and his oversized sleeping t-shirt is bulked out in a suspiciously bulletproof-vest shaped mass (thank God).

There are headphones hanging around Jay’s neck, so Bruce assumes he’d gotten it right about the morning lie-in and audiobook listening. Even mid-emergency, it’s still a rare, nice feeling to see that he knows Jason well enough to guess at least this correctly. Bruce tries to communicate with his eyes that everyone just needs to calm down and let him be taken. Pirates don’t tend to shoot billionaires dead, what with the invisible hand of the free market ensuring trigger discipline and all that, so it’s fine. They can rescue him afterwards, and there’s always help to be had. Superman might be off-world at present and Aquaman might take his own sweet time because he’s a sea king moonlighting as a massive asshole, but as long as no one gets hurt badly, a delay doesn’t matter to Bruce.

Jason’s scowling, but he does point his guns down. There’s hope yet that this is going to end relatively bloodlessly, but then the Pirate Captain lets his little victory get to his head. He’s got Bruce in an ineffective chokehold, and now he’s chuckling and waving his gun around and telling Jason that _you’re not so confident now that we’ve got your boss, huh?_

Even at a distance, Bruce can see that Jason is just barely holding on to his temper, jaw tight and teeth clenched. Having close to a foot over his captor and a hell of a lot of muscle mass on top, the ‘chokehold’ registers more like a messy cuddle, so it’s fine. 

It’s all fine.

Until, of course, it isn’t.

Because Pirate Captain isn’t completely done flexing, because he takes it into his head to further press his advantage and slam the point home, he holds the muzzle of his rifle to Bruce’s temple, and shouts _bang!_

And _of course_ Bruce has been held hostage before, of course he’s had weapons brandished in front of his face, of course there’s nothing exceptionally terrible about this situation when compared to the dozens of exceptionally terrible situations he’s been stuck in.

It’s just that he’s always, always hated guns, and he particularly hates guns held to people’s heads (a goddamn mystery why), and it’s just a little beyond what he considers tolerable, to find himself on the other side of a situation where a parent is about to be shot in the head in front of their child.

It’s something he’ll be ashamed about for the rest of forever, but hindsight’s 20/20 and not even an iron will could stop the tiniest of flinches when the thought of _Jason’s going to have to see me die and he isn’t even the one pulling the trigger_ goes through his head at great speed.

It’s a blink-and-you’d-miss-it moment, but Jason hadn’t blinked, and it’s just that inch too far.

Lord, if Luis had been fearsome before, then Jason picking up a steak knife from the dining table and throwing it so viciously, so hatefully that it goes right through the back of a pirate man’s hand is an absolute vision of terror. While Bruce gets the side of his face coated in blood (he’s pessimistically hoping it isn’t from an arterial flow), Jason is scooping up Luis and chucking him overboard. It feels like barely a second has passed from when the first splatter of blood had hit his cheek before Jason appears right in front of him, one hand holding both guns (cool-looking but hilariously ill-advised) while the other is wrapped around the bulky plastic case of the emergency life raft. 

Someone tries to drag Bruce back, and the man is met with two gun butts to the nose with a resounding _crack!_. A moment after that and Jason has Bruce pulled behind him, wig askew and kicking a different man right in the family jewels. The Pirate Captain is screaming and waving at them even as Jason hustles Bruce towards one side of the ship, shoving a life jacket down over his head and tightening the straps before Bruce can get his hands through the armholes.

It is, clearly, on purpose. “Jason,” Bruce warns him, growling even as he keeps the name as quiet as he can. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Jason kicks a stack of sun loungers over to act as a barricade against the approaching pirates, but he’s completely unharried as he turns to look at Bruce. “B, you’re banged up to fuck and back, and these guys are just massive assholes who’ve been pillaging ships carrying aid during a goddamn pandemic. Your plan’s not working out, so I’m going to handle it _my_ way. Just go hang out in the water for a while, okay,” Jason pauses and shoots over the top of the mass of wood, before ducking down to reload. “On God, I’ll swab the decks clean-ish before I pull you back up. That’s my plan.”

An errant chair arm by Jason’s side explodes into splinters from the return fire, and it’s getting really hard to avoid kill shots in order to have a civil conversation. They’re running out of time, and Bruce _knows_ , knows without a shadow of a single doubt that this is restraint and thoughtfulness and care from Jason, to hold back on what he thinks is right just because he knows Bruce doesn’t like to see a case devolve into death. There’s also a chance that the gun to his head shook both of them up more than they want to admit. This could well be a really touching moment for everyone involved.

But a dozen pirates are advancing, and more than wanting to stop Jason from murdering a bunch of people, Bruce simply _refuses_ to let him face this alone, so he just shakes his head and starts trying to work his way out of the vest.

Unfortunately, it’s at about the same time the pirates decide to go on an all-out siege, running towards them and knocking the stack of chairs over in their haste. Bruce doesn’t have time to think, just steps forward so that he can body block Jason and hope that polyethylene foam can take a shot or 12.

Jason disagrees with this course of action, and he makes it exceedingly clear. One moment Bruce is standing firm between his son and almost-certain death, and the next he finds himself being flung over the side of the yacht, Jason executing a frankly gorgeous Judo throw. A blob of bright orange follows him down, the instant raft deploying in midair.

“Fly, you fucking fool!” Jason screams at him, and Bruce’s last thought before he hits the water and the hard outer shell of the raft hits him in the head, is that he was right.

Jason _had_ been listening to the Lord of the Rings.

(And Bruce is really regretting leaving the Shire).

-

It’s going to be a hell of a story to tell the gang; hijinx on the high seas, and if Jason can convince Bruce to take a picture of him looking suitably pensive while the sea breeze flutters his hair and open shirt, they’ll have a cover for the book deal that inevitably follows Jimmy the Red-Haired Steward’s dramatic rescue of literal billionaire Bruce Wayne.

It’s almost anti-climactic in the end; he sends Bruce overboard and is polite enough to chuck a raft down with him so that the man won’t have to find out that not even Steph’s go-to brand of makeup can stand up to the open ocean, and minus an overbearing parent idiotically trying to take bullets for him, Jason’s free to just go right the hell off.

By his count, there must be close to 20 pirates now, and just one of him.

Damn, what fun odds. He knocks out 4 guys the moment they pass his barricade, and they definitely won’t be dying from those wounds. There’s a slightly messier kerfuffle when he kicks a tabletop off its legs and flings it at the guy who thought setting off a rocket-launcher in a luxury yacht is a good idea, and casualties from _that_ are self-inflicted, so there’s no sweating it. 

A half hour of screaming and shooting later, and at this point he’s just showing off when he leaps off the upper deck and gets a trick shot out into the knee of the man with the biggest rifle. At the end of it there’s a lot of moaning and groaning on the ground, there’s blood everywhere, and barring rocket-man, the Pirate Captain’s still the worst off because a serrated steak knife thrown at high speed will do a number on anyone. It’s _exactly_ what he deserves. 

Jason putters about securing the pirates with fishing line, and shoves handkerchiefs into the deeper wounds as he does a headcount and takes deep pride in having not killed anyone even though his temper’s the most frayed it’s been in a while (his history with bodies of water is bad and his track record with parental figures is even worse).

He leaves the captain tied up on the sun deck, because a sunburn’s the least the man deserves after holding a gun to Bruce’s head and being so proud of it. If Jason had trod on his hand a little heavily on his way off the deck, well. Some lessons just need to be worked in with some elbow grease. 

Cleaning takes a while because B can be so damn picky about _appearances_ , and it’s easier to do without the man himself anyways, so he doesn’t think twice about leaving Bruce to sulk in his floating inflatable tent while Jason works. When he hears noises from the pirate ship while he’s going around disarming all the weapons, he ends up finding a gaggle of kidnapped fishermen stuffed in the hold, and he wants to go step on the Pirate Captain’s hand all over again.

He frees the fishermen and moves them onto the yacht, where the staff who have crept out of the panic room with knives in their hands and murder in their hearts welcome the poor fucks and make them something hot to eat. Really, being a crusader’s a lot easier without Bruce’s presence, and it’s like a victory lap at this point. No one’s dead, even more people have been rescued than when they started, and the Coast Guard should be rolling in any minute. 

Jason _cannot_ wait to show off to B just how damn good he is at his job.

Everything wrapped up and a dozen shoulder-slaps from the crewmembers later, Jason makes his way down to the back of the yacht, where a platform can be lowered and the canoes and jet skis can be set out in the water. He’s fully expecting to see Luis hanging on to the ladder near there, with Bruce tethered like an errant puppy. Jason’s already grinning as the platform swings open with a quiet splash, but the sight that greets him isn’t one for smug eyes.

Luis is there, looking a little cold but ultimately quite calm and relaxed, and smiles when he sees him. “Jimmy!” Luis calls out, hauling himself up onto the platform and taking his shirt off to wring it dry. “You crazy bastard. I’m glad you’re okay! Is Mister Bruce also all right? The pirates are gone?” He eyes the bobbing pirate ship with great distrust, and overall gives the impression of a man ready to pick up a kayak oar and go to war. 

Jason’s leaning as far off the platform as he can, craning his neck to try and see the bright orange floating raft. “Pirates are taken care of,” he tells Luis, and doesn’t let his unease show. “Everyone’s fine, but I threw Mister Bruce off the boat too, with the little tent raft. Did you not see him, captain?”

Luis shakes his head. “You must have thrown him overboard on the other side, Jimmy.” He turns a frightful shade of pale, and leans back out the yacht to help look. “Can Mister Bruce swim?”

Everyone in the family is an accomplished swimmer; for reasons that probably only make sense when you’re a paranoid patriarch, all of them had to prove that they could swim a mile in full gear before they were okayed to patrol close to the waterfront. It’s also common knowledge in a family with a collective competitive streak a mile wide that Bruce once rescued 3 full-grown adults in the open ocean while fully kitted out, so yeah.

“Yeah, he can swim.”

So why in the hell is he not right here? 

Jason takes a deep breath, and reminds himself Bruce _always_ has a tracker on him somewhere, so even if he was carried away by the waves, actually locating him shouldn’t be an issue. What’s more likely to be a pain in the ass is the Coast Guard boats plowing through the sea towards them. Jason’s cover as a steward is enough to fool local police, but if he’s pulled in for questioning re: owning and using his guns, it’s going to become A Problem. 

A problem that would take a lot of time to handle, and that’s not something Jason’s got in spades if Bruce is missing. 

Ah, shit. He’s going to have to call this in, and that’s not going to be possible in an itchy wig on a ship crawling with officers. It’s time for Jimmy to disappear, looks like.

He considers his options, and decides to just go with his gut. Luis seems like a good guy; civilians who step up in a life-or-death situation despite common sense telling them not to usually are. And compared to B, Jason’s always been quicker to trust, anyways.

“Listen, Luis,” he tells the man, face serious. “I’m actually Mister Bruce’s bodyguard. If he’s missing or drowning, I have to go find him. He’s…. like family.” Thank God that no one else is here to hear this. “But if the Coast Guard comes and takes us all in for questioning, I can’t start looking for him. Can you tell them I jumped in the sea after Mister Bruce, and to send people out to find us? I need to grab the tender and sneak off first; he’s been in the water for a while already now, so I just don’t have time to wait.”

Everything is _probably_ completely fine, but you don’t live and then die and then be reborn and then continue to live as a successful vigilante by hanging your hat on ‘probably’. Jason’s itching to get on the little tender and check in with Alfred, but Luis covering for him would be really fucking helpful.

It feels real good when his instincts pay off. Luis doesn’t even bother saying ‘Yes’ and ‘Of course’; he’s already striding to the little box by the light switch that has the keys for all the gear, and after a quick rummage around he throws the boat’s keys to Jason.

“I’m going to believe you, Jimmy. Go find Mister Bruce, and I will tell the police how you saved us and why you left. Do you need anything more?”

Luis is just hitting homerun after homerun today, wow. Jason grins, and shakes his head. “I’m going to get my stuff from my bunk and climb out the porthole in the kitchen right onto the boat. See you when I see you, captain.”

And Jason’s gone.

-

Bruce comes to a couple of hours after his inauspicious disembarkation, if he’s judging the sun right. His face is an achy sunburned mess, but he supposes it’s preferable to being unconscious while facedown in water. He regains consciousness quietly and calmly, an extremely important skill when you are regularly abducted and knocked out, but when he cracks his eye open all he sees is the sea, all all of it.

He takes stock of the situation, and notes with some resignation that his yacht (the Pretty Penny, and worth every cent for the look on Alfred’s face) is nowhere in goddamn sight. He’s still cocooned in a life jacket, but luckily a loose buckle had wrapped around the ropes lining the life raft. It takes a bit of finessing, to work his way free and then haul himself up into the raft when he’s disorientated from being sunburned and injured and groggy, but he manages eventually.

The raft had managed to inflate all the way up, and the little tent provided blessed, blessed shade. If he was marooned on a liferaft with his children, or with a civilian, Bruce would be all action by now, cataloguing injuries and rummaging around to find what equipment they have. That’s just the exact right thing to do, in a survival situation.

But he isn’t marooned on a liferaft with anybody else. He’s by himself, his face feels like it’s on fire, he’s a little concussed, and he doesn’t know if everyone’s safe on the yacht. Instead of doing something meaningful, Bruce just groans and lays out as flat as he can get on the small raft, with his legs hanging off over the side. 

Might as well get sunburnt knees, make a set of it. 

It’s starting to feel like he’s just not meant to have a casual fun time out here in the Caribbean, and this far away from shore, nobody can hear him swear.

His legs are starting to sizzle a little by the time Bruce re-finds his will to survive, and he eventually drags himself upright, looks down to once again despair that he’s literally in swimwear and nothing else, and tugs out the dry bag filled with survival equipment tucked into a pocket near the back of the tent. He’s sure it’ll have much more kit than the average equipment bag, but because he can’t remember the last time he took it into his head to pack survival kits for non-Bat vehicles, everything is likely several years out of date.

As he digs around, any hope of finding a tracker that can _ping!_ loud enough to alert the Batcave disappears. There’s a brick of a satellite phone, but failure to keep it well-maintained means the battery is completely flat, and trying to fix it in a bobbing liferaft that’s constantly letting water in…. ill-advised. 

At least being in the Caribbean in the summer means that the current is more likely to have him drifting across the archipelago instead of sweeping him out to the Atlantic. Deserted islands are a dime a dozen here, and Bruce shudders at the thought that he might meet his end here, where it’s warm and sunny and beautiful, instead of bleeding out into a puddle of what might be rainwater or piss or both in a dark alley in Gotham, which is what he thematically deserves.

If only Alfred were here to hear him loudly think about his death after maybe 3 hours of being at sea with his own grim thoughts. 

At least the kit bag reflects his personal preferences. Enough energy bars to keep a man physically functioning for at least 2 weeks, and half of them are white-chocolate-and-cranberry flavoured. There’s a rain poncho made of the same material his cape was about 5 years ago, which means it’s light and breathable and incredibly strong. He puts it on, because where Jason presumably gets power from wearing either leather or garish beachwear, Bruce unfortunately counts himself closer to goth than not, and a black raincoat is enough to make him feel at least marginally better.

He digs around some more and finds the usual suspects: a multi-tool with a blade sharp enough to gut a camel (tried! And tested!), 3 flare guns, a little floating solar still, a first aid kit that could keep you alive through increasingly alarming injuries, wax matches and some solid fuel, and a little tin mug that had some fishing line and a bunch of hooks. God, there’s even sun cream in here, and that’s as Classic Alfred as the tiny glass bottle of exquisite whiskey. The reach of one elderly butler’s tender loving care extends really alarmingly far, and Bruce salutes the sky in his honour before taking a carefully-rationed glug of Stranahan for moral support.

It burns smoothly down his throat, and it’s as close to a second wind as Bruce is likely to get out here. Bruce sets up the solar still and has it floating on a tether right by the raft, even if he’s got at best a couple of hours of daylight left. Dinner for the night is either a protein bar or fresh-caught fish if he can swing it, and the bottle of good whiskey needs to stretch for 2 weeks for the worst case survival scenario, because that’s around when Superman comes back from his off-world mission and can come play fetch. 

Best case scenario, Jason’s going to pull up in the BatWing any moment now, and Bruce will gaze upon a hideous ginger wig and once again get to marvel at the miracle of Jason alive and coming at him.

The Batman hasn’t survived so long off the backs of best case scenarios though. Fantasy revelled in, Bruce starts divvying up his resources and makes his peace with potentially having his body be found in a poncho 3 months from now by deeply unlucky fishermen.

Hell of a legacy to leave for his children, but it’s better than pearls and a dark alleyway (he sure would have appreciated a larger bottle of whiskey).

-

Escape was the name of the game, so Jason doesn’t burn time on thinking, just grabs his supplies and steals the tender, gunning the engine and gone out of sight before the Coast Guard could board the Penny. It’s pretty hair-raising, literally; throttle opened to full he almost loses his wig to the whipping winds.

Fifteen minutes after separating from Captain Luis, Jason’s dropping anchor in a tiny lagoon and pulling out his Bat-issued laptop. First things first, he runs through all the trackers Bruce is most likely to have on him. No point in alerting HQ if Bruce just got washed ashore on a little beach a couple of miles away. He could do without the rest of the family calling him out for simultaneously being both Bruce’s back-up as well as the main reason Bruce is currently missing, thanks. There’s already plenty of self-recrimination going ‘round.

The internet’s pretty slow considering the private BatSatellite beaming it right down at him, but it only takes a few minutes before he’s run through the checklist of the dozen or so standard trackers Bruce could have chosen from. Almost everything is deactivated, probably because a mother-of-pearl button and a tie clip aren’t options that mesh with swimwear too often, but one of his watches is active and blinking a cheerful green from the other side of the island, moving swiftly towards land.

Jason thinks _hell yeah!_ at the start but then logic comes a-calling; neither the current nor a very determined man could move that quickly, and the blip is moving in a straight line away from the yacht. He takes another look at the list, and groans when he realises that what likely happened was that Bruce’s shiny golden Rolex was liberated from him pre-getting-thrown-overboard, and is now likely enjoying a pleasant ride to Nassau in the pocket of some pirate on the Coast Guard’s ship. 

“This is why I told him to get a goddamn belly button ring,” Jason shouts down at an errant starfish, who fundamentally does not care. Garish intimate jewelry work because they can stay on regardless of the state of undress, and because not even the most determined thugs tend to be super interested about groping around a man’s navel to get half an ounce of cheap tin and silver. An ugly piercing is _by far_ the best option for discreet trackers.

Just classic goddamn Bruce; too good for gun violence, too good for tacky piercings, too good to just stay the hell still. Jason half-heartedly goes through the rest of the list, on the extremely off chance that Bruce slapped on the temporary tramp stamp with its special magnetic ink, or decided to opt for the cute anklet with dangling shells that’s a Cass design, but no go.

There’s not a blip anywhere, and if Bruce is really _really_ lost at sea, time’s not something either of them have a whole lot of. Jason starts up the boat and decides to head right to the outermost chain of tiny islands, because the vital thing here is making sure that Bruce doesn’t get swept right out into the open ocean. One hand on the wheel, with the other he pops an earphone back in and presses a complicated code using the volume up/down buttons. It’s another few seconds of the Fellowship coming through before the comm connects, and it’s Alfred.

“How can I help, Master Jason?”

“How much of what went down did you catch, Agent A?”

“I must confess to a little chuckle when I saw Master Bruce being thrown overboard. The onboard cameras caught the rest of your fight, and may I just say, splendid aim with the steak knife. I doubt I could have done better myself.”

That’s a blatant lie if Jason’s ever heard one, but he’ll take it. “Thanks, Alfie. Thing is, uh. Thing is, I might have misplaced B.”

There’s a short pause, and Alfred’s voice comes back on with polite inquiry. “What do you mean by ‘misplaced’, Master Jason?”

“You saw me chuck B over and leave him a life raft, right? Yeah, well, when I went ‘round to do a pick-up, he was gone. _And_ he doesn’t have any kit on him, so.” Urgh, this is going to live on in infamy. “So I might have lost Batman somewhere in the sea.”

There’s another pause, a little longer this time, filled with enough character that Jason can just imagine Alfred with his head tipped back, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose to chase off a headache that has given him no peace presumably since B was born. “I see. Do you know if he is injured? Or if Master Bruce is missing as per some sort of plan?”

“Think he might have been grazed by a couple of bullets, but nothing life-threatening. And this _could_ be a dick move that’s part of a bigger plan, Alfred, but he knows you’d be _real_ passive-aggressive if he runs off without telling anyone. He pulls that kind of bullshit when things are apocalyptic, but it’s just a bunch of pirates not social-distancing.” Jason worries at his lower lip, and tries to feel more confident about the absence of serious injuries. “I don’t know, maybe he hit the water wrong and passed out and got swept out, or something. I just know I’m not leaving this as is.”

God literally save B if this does turn out to be some dumbfuck ploy to go off and Rambo a mission solo, that’s a Jason Todd guarantee right there.

“I believe not trusting Master Bruce to be all right is generally the right way of thinking, unfortunately.” Alfred sighs, and it comes off as static in the earpiece. “I will make some inquiries, and see what resources we have for a search and rescue mission. In the meantime, Master Jason, do what you think is best. Master Bruce may not have any of his usual equipment, but so long as he has the raft, he should survive for a good long while.”

Knowing how extremely over-prepared Bruce is in almost every aspect of his life, Jason wouldn’t be too surprised to know that all WE rafts came prepared with spear guns and a bar of solid gold. Best case scenario, he’ll find Bruce in time for dinner, and they can have an(other) awkward meal where Bruce does his damnedest to be inoffensive and haltingly the best father he can be, while Jason tries not to get ticked off by every third word out of the man’s mouth. 

Jason tells Alfred that he’s going to whip out some maps and do a lap around all the tiny little cays that dot the sea to try and find Bruce, and half his head’s thinking about a memorial service where Clark will presumably burst into tears while stood in front of a casket that’s got a symbolic Speedo in it, and that’s how Bruce is going to go down in history, which is what he deserves.

The other half decides that now is a good time to remember how Bruce had once gone all-out on a search-and-rescue mission for Jason too, many many years ago, and oh, look how _that_ turned out.

What a fucking feast or famine man. 

-

Fishing is an accursed activity for accursed men. Bruce is somebody whose hobby slash raison d’etre involves getting dressed up in armour and perching on a gargoyle somewhere high up in an unmoving manner for hours at a time, and he _still_ finds himself bored almost to tears by the lows and lowers of idly holding a fishing line in his hand, being convinced something has gotten hooked, and pulling up absolutely nothing (again and again and again).

It’s blissfully sundown by now and there’s no fresh fish on the menu, but he has a mouthful of fresh water thanks to the solar still, and he’s got half a protein bar in him for dinner. The moon’s nowhere near full and the stars are obscured; he’s completely enveloped in the kind of darkness that’s so, so foreign to a city like Gotham.

It’s all blackness as far as the eye can see, which is not very far, and all he has for company are his thoughts and the quiet _splish splish splish_ of little waves pattering against the side of his raft. 

It’s deeply unnerving even for Bruce, a man who has on occasion described himself as The Night. He has a fire starter and nothing to start a fire; he has a phone and no way to connect to anyone. He has a lot and very little all at once, and despite his best efforts, no amount of focus can get anything _done_.

So Bruce sits with his back to the opening of the little tent, and over the next couple of hours finds himself slumping and sliding lower, til his head is thrown back across the edge and all he sees is nothing.

Stoicism in the face of terrible odds is an important part of being the Batman, but Bruce has no cowl and no cape; he’s just him right now. As he stares at what may or may not be the North Star, he finds himself thinking about how dinner was supposed to be scallops and baked fish with a side of exquisite wine, and gently mourns just a little. If his luck held, Jason would have swung by later to help himself to the dessert tray that Bruce has delivered straight to his room, and he could have sat there and basked in the unending pleasure of Jay's healthy and hearty and whole company.

Instead, he’s stuck out at sea trying to guess how close or far away he is from 10:47 PM, which is the default time to throw up a signal in cases where a team’s been broken up. In Gotham, even if he didn’t have a watch or a phone or a comm unit or a car, he could usually guess the time down to 15 minutes, just based on which shops were open and which shops were closed, what buses were running and what colour the WE building was lit up to, by the presence or absence of the tinkly elevator music that accompanies the fountain light show in the main plaza.

Here, there’s nothing. The position of the planets would be a bit of a hint on a good day, but on a bad day with heavy clouds and a concussion he’s not confident Venus is real. The outdoors are a mistake, and laid out in a raft miles and miles away from the nearest cityscape Bruce feels homesickness so keenly he has to turn over and throw up a little bit.

At least the concussion is keeping him company.

The first hour after nightfall he had taken the initiative to just sit there and count time out, but there’s something spectacularly soul-sucking about counting down seconds. Bruce was somewhere in the 3000s when he came to the conclusion that he would rather not reinforce his concept of mortality by literally calling out each moment he comes closer to death, thanks. It’s been a while since he stopped counting, but time’s a mess in the absence of manmade context.

He’s also, shamefully, a mess in the absence of manmade context.

Bruce has 3 flares and a son out there somewhere looking for him. Having a predetermined time to launch a signal is not a fundamentally bad idea, but it’s not practical when out in the field, and right now he’s even willing to go so far so as to admit that using the time of his parents’ passing is both extremely grim and extremely unkind to all parties involved.

All factors considered, it’s as good a time as any to get the flare gun. If he’s lucky, Jason will be ‘round to pick him up in under an hour. If he’s less lucky, it might be a different band of roving pirates that come for him, though by this point the company of sun-dried criminals is greatly preferable to just his own.

If he’s really, _really_ unlucky, the flare’ll explode big and bright up in the sky to the attention of absolutely no one, and when that happens Bruce can begin to doubt his reality as much as he doubts Venus’.

“Please let it not be 10:47,” he says in the vain hope that karma’s looking out for him as he sticks his upper body out the tent flaps and shoots at the sky.

The flare goes up straight and true and explodes into bright bright light, and all of this would be a thing to be happy about if the presence of light didn’t highlight the clear, helpless absence of everything else.

For the first time in a very long time, the fearsome big bad Bat of Gotham turns in early for the night, but nobody is even around to appreciate it.

(He will find out that it was, in fact, just around 9 when he shot off the flare, or just about 3000 seconds after the 3000 seconds he’d already counted.)

(The invention of time was a Mistake.)


	2. These Men, Having A Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dick comes in clutch, Bruce's non-degree in electrical engineering manifests, and a very dramatic rescue is earned by all parties involved.

* * *

Jason is eating a cold bowl of mac and cheese that he'd grabbed on the way out the Pretty Penny when a blip of red in the corner of one eye has him whipping his head ‘round so fast he gives himself a headache. He also almost drops his dinner down his front, but reacts instinctively to instead throw the mess of aluminium foil and carbs into the ocean (rest in pieces). 

There's no time to waste; even sparing a vague hope that foil is biodegradable is a second of flare-light gone dimmer, and for all the 1001 training sessions he’s had with a whole host of literal weirdos, ‘How to track a flare from a missing Batman while out on your own in the Caribbean at night’ has somehow never been covered. How long does a flare last? He’s already counting down the seconds as he maneuvers the prow in the right direction and guns the engine.

Several search-and-rescue teams are out in force looking for Bruce, because losing a billionaire to piracy is not the government’s idea of a good time even if the proletariat (and on occasion, Jason himself) might beg to differ. Jason’s already had to putter around with all his lights out just to avoid being picked up by Coast Guard ships steaming by with massive search lights, and it’s a hell of a time to be forced to remember long-ago lessons on how to navigate a boat in shallow reefy waters as he tries to evade discovery.

He hits a bump, and it’s really a crapshoot if he just rammed through ancient coral or hit a small wave wrong. Either way, Jason is unironically apologetic as he opens up the throttle with one hand and fumbles with some maps in the other. He doesn’t know how far the flare is from him, but judging by how it’s little more than a messy bright smudge against the pitch black sky, the flare’s probably as far as it can be from him while still being visible.

Jesus lord, how much distance can one man travel after a pirate invasion and a spot of head trauma?

If he's generous and gives it, oh, 30 miles, he can draw up a radius of where Bruce might be, and even if it's a damn lot of square mileage it's still less than an entire ocean. There’re a lot of unknowns; tiny little islands dot the ocean here, for one. Is Bruce free-floating still? Or is he safely marooned on a lush little patch of sand? Could the raft be sinking, and that’s why the flare was triggered so much earlier than the signal time?

Jason has potentially murdered another patch of coral before he thinks that, _Christ, what if that’s not even Bruce?_

Still, though, searching and rescuing people is part and parcel of the vigilante life, be it your father(?) figure or any other unlucky fuck stuck out at sea on a moonless night. That’s part of the Bat Code, after all, that no victim is more important than any other just by virtue of status or class or, urgh, ~personal relations~.

No criminal’s ever going to crime hard enough to get the death penalty either, which is a legitimate stance in a criminal justice system as sick and rotten as, oh, every criminal justice system made by man, but there’s also something incontrovertible about Jason literally being killed by the Joker, so. 

So, what a shitty balance! What a demonstration of how the victim’s not as important as the killer! What a shitty man-

All right all right all right all right, that’s enough of that. Jason _needs_ to stop thinking round-about thoughts that get him all riled up because if he keeps going this way he’ll find himself cutting the engine and thinking _doesn’t feel so great not to get saved, huh, B?_

Which is more unfair than fair, has been that way for a while now because God love him, Bruce is almost always a fuckin’ wreck of a non-oceanic kind but he sure does try. 

God, the Caribbean was just a great big mistake, and Jason has potentially deeply overestimated his ability to keep his head steady when he’s got a hell of a history with things going wrong when he’s surrounded by glittering green water. Imagine being Pavlov’d by the Pit into being scared of tropical beaches? It’s maddening. Bruce getting roughed up by pirates because Jason got too deep into the Fellowship? Even worse.

Misplacing one whole man when Jason’s primary, god, _sole_ purpose for being here is to safeguard that same whole man?

He hits a sandbank, and the boat catches air for way longer than can be safe. He hits the water again with a heavy _thump_ , and with it comes the clarity that he’s definitely, definitely angriest with himself for dropping the ball.

“Shit!” Jason yells, only partly at the universe.

What a time for teenage angst to show up, and much like Jason it’s just late enough to be a Massive Hindrance. If he makes it through the night and finds that he’s got fresh pimples to match the angst, he’s going to blow a casket.

The flare’s all dead now but Jason’s still going at full-speed, hurtling in what he hopes is a straight line right into the dark.

Jason’s very much a shoot-first ask-questions-later kind of guy, but even for somebody who responds best to direct requests from his lizard hindbrain, he can feel himself unraveling the littlest bit. 

(Oh man, maybe being bad at search-and-rescue is a trait he inherited from B? What a thought.)

He forces himself to ease up on the biting speed, even if he keeps persistently heading towards the after-image burned into his eyes. One hand on the wheel, he uses the other to get his comm in his ear and page home. Jason’s feeling dangerously off-balance right now, but there’s nothing like a shot of Alfred straight to the brain to even the keel, so that’s what he wants. 

What he _gets_ , is a massive Dick who sounds incredibly chipper for a man with a missing father. “Yello, Jay, what can I do you for?”

The desire to hang up is so strong that Jason has to strain a little to stay his hand. “Dick,” he says with feeling. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Blüdhaven?”

“Quiet night, everyone’s lying low waiting for an arms shipment we already made sure isn’t coming in, so here I am. What’s up?”

“Don’t suppose Alfred is there?” Jason says, resigned.

“He’s spying on the Bahamian Navy to check on their progress. Did you know, Bruce drops so much cash when he’s in the Caribbean that a bunch of the countries there technically consider him, him _personally_ , a trade partner? Alfred’s trying to figure out if they’re gonna send out fighter jets tomorrow, because, hang on, hang on-”

Oh, God, Jason knows this little pause way too well, and he scrunches his eyes shut before it comes for him. Why does Dick always insist on trying to do this? Who has ever made him believe he was good at impressions-

“It would be _such_ a waste of taxpayer money just to find Master Bruce, goodness, it would be best if they don’t do such a thing, oh ~dear~.” 

Dick’s voice breaks, and he starts laughing softly to himself even though his attempt at Alfred’s pristine accent is so offensive that the UK might impose sanctions against him for the crime.

Despite himself, Jason cracks a smile. “Shut up, you’re so bad at accents. I’m a thousand miles away and I’m embarrassed.”

“Nope, I can tell you’re impressed with me-”

Alfred’s muffled voice comes through, presumably because he’s projecting at Dick from a distance away, and Jason really can’t resist laughing at the “I for one am not, Master Dick,” that comes to stab Dick right in the back.

There’s a lull where Dick presumably turns the full force of his wounded puppy face at Alfred before he comes on again. “Anyways,” he says, about as testy as Dick gets when he’s not actually upset, “my point is, Jay, a lot of people are out looking for B right now. He _is_ gonna get found, because everyone and their uncle’s got a soft spot for Bruce Wayne, rich dumbass who’s always got a smile and a thousand dollar tip to spare. You made the right call pulling him out of a situation that was too much for him in civilian-mode, and the _only_ problem with you not finding him first is that you have to wait till he’s back to yell at him for getting himself lost.”

What a Dick move. All flash and pop and noise and then he kicks your feet out from under you. Jason hates it as much as he admires it, and he has to stop the boat before he runs straight into an island. “I didn’t ask for your opinion,” he says, about as testy as Jason gets when he’s not actually upset.

“I know, Jason, but it’s not like I need your permission to drop some sage advice,” Dick informs him smugly. “It’s a weird feeling to have something as, like, weirdly pedestrian and benign as getting a little lost at sea happen to Mister All Control All The Time Wayne, but you don’t need to be howling down the seas at 100 miles an hour to make up for a non-mistake. Think of it as enforcing a beach holiday on the Bat; it’s gonna turn out fine, trust me.”

Jason’s not sure what precipice he had been accelerating towards when he saw the flare, some hideous combination of guilt-anger-self-loathing driving him to an edge, but Dick’s casual confidence has got him backing away from it and onto firmer ground. He takes in a deep breath, and another, and forces the madness to recede gently back like it’s time for low tide and he’s the moon saying so, baby.

“If we’re really lucky,” Jason finds himself saying, “tomorrow Twitter’s going to catch on fire because some fisherman found B and a picture of him in a Speedo doing the peace sign with his saviour from Nassau is going to go viral.”

Dick sighs dreamily on the other end of the line. “A man can only hope, Jaybird.”

Damn, a man really only can (hope that everything ends up all right).

-

Above and beyond learning to grasp intangible concepts like ‘Truth’ and ‘Fairness’ to fuel a thirst for justice, you also get a lot of practical real-world benefits to a life of vigilantism. For one, Bruce is in shockingly good shape for a man pushing 40, even if he’s got so many metal bits holding his skeleton together that whenever he flies commercial he has to carry his X-rays with him.

For another, endless nights working the Gotham beat and the occasional interplanetary hoo-haa, and he’s become singularly gifted at getting sleep in any situation where he’s not actively being murdered. 

So despite a crick in the neck and 2 inches of standing water in a slowly sinking raft, Bruce finds himself waking up in a hot, muggy tent after a full night’s sleep, damp but shockingly well-rested.

He’s also surprisingly still, and when he moves his weight, he’s tentatively excited by how there’s a little less give than he’s come to expect. Feeling optimism rushing unnaturally in his veins, Bruce opens the flap and oh, he just has to sigh.

Land’s never looked so good before, even if the sun is so, so bright that the fine white sand is literally blinding.

Bruce steps out like a fresh-born foal onto the little beach, and abruptly bursts into swears because the sand is oven-hot and he is a man in a poncho and no shoes. He deduces two reasonable courses of action; run straight up the beach to where coconuts and an assortment of other trees provide shade and presumably cooler ground, or-

Treat this like the sea-side vacation it’s supposed to be, and head right into the blessed cool relief of the sea.

The first crisp sensation of water lapping at over-hot skin makes exquisitely clear why other people enjoy going to the beach, and Bruce just has to sigh another pleased, soothed little sigh. The sun is close enough to directly overhead that it must be about noon, which tells him 2 very different but very important things:

  1. Somehow, in a life raft with a minor concussion and a couple of bullet wounds, Bruce appears to have slept about 12 straight hours, and he’s feeling more refreshed than he would after a relaxed night in the penthouse suite of a 6-star hotel with an on-call butler for his butler, and
  2. His flare must not have been seen, or if it was, must not have been traceable. First thing he’s going to do when he gets back is to make sure that all emergency vehicles are equipped with passive trackers with a long shelf-life; a civilian being put in his position would not have nearly as many people coming after them, and that’s unacceptable.



He can’t do anything about either thing right now, and the thought is less miserable than he would have initially anticipated. Once he’s home, he can trial some sort of hydraulic water-bed system to mimic the gentle drift of a raft in a summer sea, and he has some ideas for retro-fitting shark radio collars to increase their longevity which might be helpful for similar emergencies in the future. The blueprints are already manifesting in his mind, and the prospect of future work almost brings a whistle to his lips.

The difference between being ‘lost at sea’ and just ‘lost’ shouldn’t be that big, but Bruce is feeling significantly better just from being on steady ground even with blistering, peeling skin on his cheeks and knees. Once his feet have cooled down enough to soothe the burns, Bruce turns to his half-bobbing half-stranded little life raft and is filled with sudden affection for the bright orange little thing. Maybe this is how Damian feels about his many, many pets, Bruce thinks as he pats it awkwardly before disconnecting the solar still.

Two mouthfuls of lukewarm water later, he replenishes the still with more saltwater before grabbing a couple of coconut fronds scattered by him to fashion some beach sandals. If he starts braiding the leaflets while sitting cross-legged in the water, his raincoat floating around him like a shadow of a lotus leaf while his legs are bare and pricked by shells, well.

People do strange things when on vacation, don’t they?

Partway through weaving a little wide-brimmed hat for himself, munching on a power bar and appreciating how delicious it is when the chocolate chips have melted into a sweet gooey mess, Bruce is beginning to realise with some mild alarm that barring his concern for Jason and his family worrying about his disappearance, this is the most relaxing time he’s ever had at a beach.

A dram of whiskey, a lot of sleep, and a bit of sun are a hell of a combination, and he’s pleased that they can rejuvenate even him, a bat of a man. 

Once he’s dragged the life raft up and into the shade of the trees while decked out in a palm hat and flip-flops, Bruce stretches out his back until his pesky L5 vertebra pops back into place, and looks forward to fashioning tools from shells and stones to fix the battery of the satellite phone.

The sweet ocean breeze manages to blow sweat-damp hair off his brow, and Bruce doesn’t quite figure out until later that this sense of well-being might, in fact, be because

  1. He managed to get substantially more rest to recover from his minor injuries than he usually would let himself have if he was in Gotham, and rest really is _rest_ orative, and
  2. He knows Jason is out there, possibly on his way to pick up Bruce. Even if Jason doesn’t bother to come play fetch, Bruce has already lived through a Jason-related worst case scenario, and if he remains unfound for the rest of his life it still wouldn’t be _close_ to the most terrible, unbearable thing he’s ever had to withstand, so.



He pulls out the flathead screwdriver on the multi-tool, puts his head down, and gets to work.

Halfway through stripping a wire with a broken bit of shell and his bare teeth, Bruce registers the wrongest thing about this entire venture, and it isn’t the gunshot wounds or the pirates or getting thrown overboard.

It’s because his condition now is an inverse of his situation at the start of the mission, when he was ready to flee into the sea without anyone’s knowledge or permission. He’s fine alone, but he shouldn’t be (alone).

He’s fine alone, but he’s better together. 

-

Jason had done his best trying to trace the origin point of the flare, spending hours in the dark getting increasingly irritated by how a man who builds space jets as a matter of fact hasn’t taken a couple of hours off one evening to brainstorm an emergency signal better than ‘real small fireball shot at the sky’. It was some time around 2 AM when he finally called it quits, and that decision was down to both his helpless tendency to implicitly trust Dick, as well as a promise he’d made to himself in the dark early days that he wasn’t ever going to lose any sleep over Bruce, the massive asshole.

It’s sound advice that tends to cover Bruce at his best and at his worst, so it’s only right to listen to himself.

He’d dropped anchor in a sandbank right around where he thought the flare might have gone up, and then made a little nest for himself out of life jackets and tarp. Even with a brisk ocean breeze he found himself sweating and swearing as he worked, but once he’d pulled the canvas roof back and settled down in his makeshift bed, the world seemed to abruptly, quietly become unkinked.

In the absence of a moon and this far away from any city, the stars are out in full force and there’s almost as much light as there is night. There’s a massive smudge streaking across part of the sky, and it’s got to be the Milky Way, which is another head-trip altogether. There’re so many damn stars clustered together that combined, they’ve softened the dark. 

The Shire this ain’t, but it’s not all bad. 

Fellowship is playing out its ending on his headphones, and when he stretches out with his head pillowed by his fugly wig stuffed with his Hawaiian uniform shirt, Sam says “Don’t you leave him Samwise Gamgee,” and Jason finds himself thinking _Big same, buddy_ , for no particular reason. 

Sleep had come uncommonly quick and been uncommonly kind, and when he wakes, it’s to no greater threat than a morning sun that’s slowly, luxuriously baking his face. Christ, is this sense of warm wellbeing a common thing for people on holiday? Gulls are screaming at him, and even that isn’t unpleasant. Hell, Jason reckons he could knock a bird or three out of the sky, could have a pretty decent breakfast of barbecued gull if he goes and starts a little fire on the closest little island, but that feels like inviting bad karma on a good day and he knows much, much better than to tempt fate.

So he doesn’t. Instead, he dissolves instant coffee powder in a water bottle warmed by the sun, gnaws on a power bar that’s got bits of chewy dried cranberries in it, and slowly but carefully goes through the long, long PDF Tim sent him overnight that summarises the ten thousand ocean current simulations he’s run to guesstimate Bruce’s location. It’s a very Tim thing through-and-through, from the file name fastidiously coming complete with the date and update version to the dozens of little comments that run the gamut from ‘that’s a thoughtful and insightful point’ to ‘does Tim _seriously_ think I don’t know what ‘archipelago’ means’, but Jason’s willing to cut an uncommon amount of slack for a concussed Tim teaching himself Advanced Oceanography in 24 hours.

It's a little sweet, right down to the font 16 type because it's not uncommon knowledge that Jason gets a bitching migraine when trying to read small writing in a moving vehicle.

He takes his mission brief with his coffee, and sorts out a plan of attack. Alfred had updated the group chat to say that with Babs' help they've managed to force a full system reboot on the Bahamian Armed Forces’ network, which is Not Great but is also substantially less a burden on an overstretched system than hunting one man lost at sea with fighter jets, and that buys Jason another 24 hours before the birds get deployed. Based on Tim's map and Jason's rough idea of where the flare went up, there’s a small chain of cays that seem to be the best candidates for a quick look-around. The tender’s well-stocked with non-perishable food stuffed into a cooler, ready to be whipped out at the first sign of a billionaire’s fancy, and Jason’s more than able to keep working on little more than lukewarm champagne and cheese crackers, so he’s set.

Brushing his teeth in saltwater because drinking water’s limited to a few 5-gallon bottles is Less Fun, but it does make him feel like a guy on one of those survival-type TV shows, which is 100% the reason why he ends up cutting a strip out of his Hawaiian shirt to wear as a bandanna. God, he’d give up a gun for a khaki shirt and a pair of pants with 45% more pockets than anyone would think reasonable to complete the ensemble, but this is as good as good gets and it’s what he chooses to take a picture of to send to the family group chat with an update on what islands he’s planning to comb today.

The gulls keep gull-screaming and Jason thinks of buffalo wings all over again, but there’s a time and a place for tastes-like-chicken and it’s not here and now. The islands are a few hours’ boating away, and there’ll be over a dozen little cays to work through when he does get there. No rest for the wicked, no BBQ for the lackluster, that’s how the saying goes, right?

Besides, food’s going to taste better once the mission’s done and Bruce is back to brooding in a dimly-lit room instead of roasting in the sun, within line of sight and at the exact right distance for Jason to heckle him for his fastidious table manners and tendency to eat peas with a knife like a whole-ass weirdo, the exact right distance to be kept safe.

Say what you will about the man, and you can say a lot about Bruce and a lot of it will be pretty awful and pretty accurate, but he’s not half-bad company for an anti-piracy campaign. It’s a sign of character growth, probably, that Jason’s even almost willing to admit that he misses the man.

It’s not growth of any kind and more of a default state-of-being for anybody who knows Bruce to worry about him, though. As Jason starts the engine up for a busy day of man-hunting, he takes a moment to recall that back in his Robin days he used to worry about how Bruce would routinely almost die from tripping down the stairs on late mornings after later nights, stuporous and stupendous.

Give a man a decade, and it’s amazing the little tics that keep on sticking.

(If Jason makes an extra bottle of lukewarm instant coffee for when he sees the bastard, well. It worked to stop Bruce from falling over his own feet in the mornings way back when, and out here there’s no one to judge his unnecessary care but birds, so.

Maybe some things you just never learn how to forget.)

-

It’s a few hours of good, solid work before heat and hunger remind Bruce that he’s human, actually, and it’s time for a break. In the blazing heat the solar still provides a bounty of delicious body-warm water, and Bruce partakes in that and another half of a power bar while sitting up to his waist in the cool, cool sea. He’s even got a fishing line out, baited with a bit of cranberry, and he spends his 30 minutes of daily meditation meditating on the likelihood of him getting the hook stuck into his own feet. 

It’s a good session; he doesn’t get hooked, but he suspects he would have been more amused than anything else if he had ended up catching himself.

The power bar dunked lightly in the sea gives it a delicious sharp-salty flavour that is so singularly enjoyable that Bruce makes a mental note to update Alfred on some recipe recommendations. Under the shade of his palm hat and surprisingly well-hydrated, he takes stock of his progress for the day. 

The life raft has been pulled far enough up the beach that he should be clear even when the tide rises. It’s resting in a bed of leaves to minimise the risk of sharp rocks tearing through the raft, with its flaps tied back to air out the stink of stale blood and dried salt. Bruce thinks he might be tempted to anchor the boat out at sea so that he gets to indulge in the gentle waves lulling him to sleep again, tonight, which is a hell of an indulgent thought. Food stocks are doing all right, between the solar still and the bounty of the coconuts he can harvest, his water situation is fairly secure, and all the shallow wounds from yesterday’s (only just yesterday?) injuries have healed over and dried up. 

He’s spotted crabs and fish in the shallows around the cay, and surely proficiency at catching his own food will come with time and necessity. There are also a few birds’ nests in the dense shrubbery deeper inland, complete with chicks in some and eggs in others. Bruce doesn’t know much about birds, he just knows about Robins, and as such he suspects he will have to get much, much closer to dying before he could force himself to eat any baby birds. Two weeks of deprivation likely can’t break him, and 2 days of being lost certainly won’t.

By far the most exciting development for the day is his success at excising the faulty battery of the satellite phone. A good multi-tool and a practical understanding of electrical engineering also meant that with some coconut shells and a bit of rejigging, he’s got the phone hooked up to a haphazard salt water battery system and the results are looking promising.

There is not a hope in _hell_ that he will get enough of a charge to actually call anyone, but with his roughshod set-up the phone is now able to send out weak _pings_ to the satellite. If anyone’s watching out for any signal from the phone, and he’s got a great many reasons to think somebody would be, they should be able to approximate his location. Rescue is more likely than not, and even if it takes his family days to find him, he’ll be fine.

He’ll be better than fine, even, as soon as he can workshop a way to make pants out of available materials. It’s an even bigger challenge than the satellite phone, and Bruce is already trialling some long grasses to see if they remain supple if he leaves them to dry in the sun. By his estimation, he’ll move into trying to weave fabric by day 6 of his isolation. While his first regret is being separated from Jason mid-emergency, his second most immediate regret at present is lacking access to an expert to teach him how to make bark cloth.

It’s a hole in his education, and right after he informs Alfred of the importance of salt in his power bars, Bruce plans to draft a training session for both his family and the Justice League to teach everyone survival skills for when one inadvertently becomes a castaway.

Manufacturing natural textiles may not be a top priority for a gang of people who are aggressively not-average and can, in many circumstances, fly and use magic, but another gap that Bruce has identified in his training (and as such, in the training of everyone under him) is the importance of things that don’t strictly matter.

Emergency rations don’t need to have white chocolate chunks to supply sufficient nutrition; rain ponchos don’t need to be black to be waterproof; plastic trash strapped to his feet are easier to make than woven palm shoes. All of these things are fundamentally true, but Bruce can also now confirm that all of those things being the exact way that they are have helped keep him up and going despite Bruce’s fundamental, deep dislike of being cut off and inactive and useless (and alone). 

It’s dramatic and a little silly, but as he starts making another pair of slippers in a slightly different style to better limit the amount of between-toe chafing, Bruce is forced to admit that sentimentality actually does have a practical place in the tool belt of a crimefighter, and also-

And also, the sun may be getting to him more than he thought.

These palm slippers aren’t going to fit him; Jason’s always had oddly long feet.

-

A notification comes through close to twilight while Jason’s wading through ankle-deep water in a sandbank between two tiny islands, glad for the fucking ugly quick-drying sailing shorts he has on.

He doesn’t know what he was expecting; maybe that a Coast Guard boat has come close enough that he needs to make a quick getaway, maybe that a massive stormfront is heading towards him because it’s been that kind of year, maybe Steph decided to pursue his true dream of becoming an Instagram food blogger and now Jason’s going to be forced to look at a dozen pictures of a supper made by Alfred that he doesn’t get to eat.

Instead it’s just a message from Dick that says ‘got em’, and a blinking red dot not too far away from where he is. 

Jason doesn’t bother asking how Dick got this information. The world is full of bizarre oddities and Gotham’s batting average for strangeness is higher than average. Besides, after about 5 missions with the League, you just learn to throw your hands up and accept the gently unknowable. Jason’s seen god-adjacent beings directly shoot prophecies into people’s brains, and sometimes the most important part of being a successful vigilante is the ability to accept that things will just be that way sometimes. 

The exact right thing to do would be to run for the boat and tear away for the quickest pick-up service the Caribbean’s ever seen, but the sheer, hideous relief that comes in quicker than the quickest tide has him toppling over, out onto his back and into the water. 

The bastard is out in the middle of goddamned nowhere, potentially with some sort of head injury, and yet B has somehow managed to cobble together a signal loud enough and clear enough to be tracked within 36 hours of disappearing. 

What a shameless overachiever! Jason can’t help bursting out into laughter, driven a little crazy by a manhunt that got ended by the man being hunted. Less than 2 days after the pirates made landfall on their ship and Jason’s gone through all 7 stages of grief, it feels like, had just come through to accepting that he could’ve done better by Bruce and that he’s ready to rectify that by any means necessary, gotten a _little_ excited about mounting a rescue while dressed like a man who might eat snakes just to show off on TV, and it’s all been rendered moot because a damn lost man figured out how to beam a satellite using mind power alone, apparently.

You just gotta laugh sometimes.

Jason sits up and pulls his bandanna off. He’s got a man to collect, and he’ll be happier if Bruce doesn’t find out about his khaki-coloured knight-flavoured dreams any time soon, if ever. 

He’ll be even happier once he’s secured the man and got him safely stowed away on the tender with him. Wrap him in two life jackets this time, with another wrapped around Bruce’s dumb thick head for extra protection and good luck. Lash him down to the seat and maybe say a prayer to Diana for safe passage through to Nassau, because Jason would _absolutely_ not be surprised to be halfway home and then have the seas part because Aquaman’s gone rogue and the first thing on his agenda is to exact his revenge on the Batman, asshole extraordinaire.

Jason catches himself making half a dozen half-serious ideas about the things he can do to find Bruce and keep the damn fool man safe and within sight, and it leaves him wondering if a similar series of schemes had run through Bruce’s head when Jason had returned. If he’d seen through the Red Hood and in that first moment had thought instantly, vehemently, that he wanted to wrap Jason in enough armour that the mother of all crowbars couldn’t even bruise him; attack the Joker and get rid of the biggest threat of all. 

There’s no way of knowing aside from asking, probably, and even then Bruce will likely just ignore him. Still soaking in the sea, though, Jason finds himself tripping over the thought that he blames the ocean a lot less than he blames himself for what’s happened to Bruce, and that sort of thinking may be more commonplace in the family than is healthy. 

(What if, yeah, what if in Bruce’s weird jacked-up head the Joker isn’t as much to blame for what happened to Jason as Bruce is himself? What if Bruce figures that the best way to keep somebody safe is to keep somebody away from him, and that Jason wanting to ban the man from any body of water larger than a mid-sized lake isn’t all that different to Bruce wanting to keep people at arm’s length as he does as much as he can and a fair bit that he can’t all by his stupid damn self?).

“He’s so fucking weird,” Jason tells a passing fish, steadfastly ignoring that he himself is likely also really fucking weird by proxy. If he sounds a little fond and a little sympathetic while he says it, it’s fine, because the fish has already fucked off and is unlikely to rat him out to any of the traitors at home. 

Wet through and through with his hair slicked to his head from his short jaunt into the sea, Jason climbs to his feet and shakes off excess water and maudlin thoughts. He’s familiar with loss and despair, has had more of it than the national average, but the thing of it is, today’s not that.

It’s the opposite of that. It’s a search and rescue, and he’s searched, so now…

It’s time for a rescue. 

-

Carefully introducing six more coconut half-shells filled with concentrated salt water from the still into his battery set-up should, by his calculations, have boosted the signal strength of the satellite phone. The red light by the keypad blinks more frequently now, and lacking anything more specialised Bruce can only trust that that means things are working. Not bad for a day’s work; between that, the numerous wardrobe options he has fashioned out of raw materials, and the jolly little fire he’s got boiling some water tinged with Stranahan and sprinkled with harvested cockles, it’s turned out to be a shockingly pleasant day.

Bruce had tried his luck with catching fish, but the one time he managed to get his hands on one, its helpless flapping and its big, wet eyes staring up at him had made him feel _incredibly_ guilty. He could almost _hear_ Damian in the back of his head, a dramatic gasp of “Father!” for even thinking about killing this poor little fish that is presumably trying its best, and he just couldn’t. He ends up with boozy shellfish for dinner, because for now Bruce has to settle for eating things that can’t stare at him, but things feel good nevertheless.

Bruce gets ready for dinner after changing into his night-time attire (banana leaves softened and molded over the fire, sewn into questionable shorts using fishing line and prayer), and mourns the alcohol boiled off even as he enjoys the smokey, salty cockles for dinner. Right now, with the fire warming his feet and a belly somewhat full of somewhat good food, Bruce finds himself content and well-rested. 

Usually when he’s on missions abroad, half his head’s still back in Gotham, constantly checking for updates and checking to make sure that nothing is going _too_ wrong while he’s away. He’s trained some of the best crime-fighters in the world and their population density in Gotham is unmatched, but paranoia can come for the best of people and he’s not even that, so the persistent, ugly niggling concern is always there.

Here, there’s nothing to slake his worries. He doesn’t know if things are very good or very bad; he _can’t_. The lack of access to knowledge is weirdly freeing, even if he might be driven completely crazy after a few more days of this. Still, Bruce is willing to take little victories where he can.

As he slurps up the rest of the briny, earthy broth, Bruce makes another note to himself:

It’s important to learn to let go, at least a little, at least for just a little while, and things that help with that include a mild concussion, a dash of whiskey, a good night’s sleep, and meditation while up to the chest in the Caribbean. 

What an educational trip. He doesn’t know where the pirates’ hideout is, but dealing with crime is generally a lot easier than dealing with himself so Bruce isn’t too concerned. Besides, Jason’s out there with plenty of reinforcements in the wings; disorganised crime doesn’t really stand a chance. 

He sits by the fire, half in a doze while his hindbrain works on idle thoughts like figuring out where the Falcones are getting their cocaine from, and what would be the upper limit of a gift that Duke might accept for a birthday. _Forging a car purchase form in his name is going to give you grief_ , he thinks, and the word ‘grief’ gets at him for some reason, tugs and tells him that he’s forgetting something, that something needed to be done before he can call it a night, and-

Bruce scrambles to his feet and winces when he hears the sound of a banana-pant seam give way. In all the sense of accomplishment he had been waddling in by virtue of getting the phone to work, he had forgotten that there are other avenues he is meant to pursue. Batman is supposed to be able to pride himself on his thoroughness and foresight.

Failing to remember the signal flare is not that, and it’s frankly embarrassing how a little vacation could have gone to his head like this. He digs out the kit bag and finds the second flare, and he doesn’t really know what time it is but times like these time is even more of a man-made construct than usual, and Bruce has already sworn to himself to immediately change the extremely depressing official call time anyways, so it really doesn’t matter.

He holds the gun above his head, checks that conditions are good and clear and fair out here in the breezy abyss, cocks the trigger and lets her go.

The rocket flare screeches and screams as she climbs climbs climbs up into the air and stays there, glowing like a lit match in a dark room, and for a moment the island is lit up in red. The world seems just a little unreal, and Bruce becomes less real with it.

Unreality increases but in a good way when a familiar voice comes in on the breeze, hollering at him that “That better fuckin’ be you, B,” from the red-tinted gloom, the roar of a boat engine being pushed far too hard just barely audible underneath Jason’s wrath.

If that isn’t just thematically appropriate, oh.

Bruce smiles while his rescuer is still far too far at sea to see him, and calls out “Jason. It’s been a while,” into the dark.

It’s been less than two days, and he’s substantially less injured than he is on average, so it doesn’t feel right to feel so singularly heartened to see the little lights on the little tender making the white streak in Jason’s hair glow as they finally see each other across the water. It doesn’t feel right to say, I was glad I got to come here with you, I _am_ glad to be here with you, even if it’s just here, just at the end, so he doesn’t.

Bruce is many things by nature and even more by design, but emotionally well-adjusted isn’t one of them. Despite that, though, when Jason leaps out of a still-moving boat to rush up the shallows and the beach to shout about how Bruce is an idiot and a damn fool and unreliable and a dumbass and, fuck, what the hell are you even wearing, how is your stupid head, he can’t help but be deeply, warmly amused. “Jason,” he says, ducking under a life jacket that Jason’s trying to force on him, “Jason, stop, Jason, what are you doing?”

(The answer was, of course, a lot. After coordinating with Alfred, Jason had orchestrated a rescue via a passing Navy ship that just _happened_ to see the life raft floating by them in the morning. Bruce had been spirited away to Nassau for a check-up and a lavish celebration dinner, where the Mayor accidentally promised citizenship for Bruce and all of his brood after Bruce declared that he’s setting up a chain of free hospitals across the Caribbean as thanks for his rescue. 

Dinner had been delicious, and Captain Luis had been there, calm and mild and free of any chairs with which to bash evil-doers with.

The good captain had asked Bruce where ‘our special friend Jimmy’ was, and Bruce couldn’t say ‘He actually found me yesterday night but we stayed on the island because he was determined not to transport me by small boat when I am technically recovering from a brain injury’, because he’s not sure he wants to deepen the extremely chaotic camaraderie between the captain and Jason.

He _definitely_ couldn’t say that Jason had stayed with him till his rescue, careful to make sure that Bruce was picked up safely and swiftly before Jason had made his own way back to rendezvous with Bruce at the hotel, woven-palm shoes going _thwap-thwap-thwap_ on marble floors.

He couldn’t say any of this, even if Luis deserved to hear it, so he had just clapped Luis on the shoulder and winked as outrageously flirtatiously as he could. “He’s good,” Bruce had said, which is fundamentally true. “And he’s around. Someone’s got to keep an eye on me, you know!”

Bruce had laughed, and so had Luis, even though this, too, is fundamentally true.)

Jason doesn’t even pause in his one-man mission to enforce safety gear. He just looks at Bruce like he’s still concussed, looks at him like he did back in the Cave when Bruce had been trying to quietly sneak out to handle this, all of this, by himself, and it stops Bruce in his tracks. “Jaybird,” Bruce says as he tries to break free again, “I’m fine. It’s not your job to worry about me.”

Jason just snorts and rolls his eyes as he manages to slip the life jacket onto Bruce with the straps pulled tight. He looks Bruce in the eyes, green and aglow as the sea, and tells him, 

“It really fucking is, B. God knows you need some looking after.”

There’s a pause because Bruce is a little stunned, and Jason seems to hear an echo of his own words as he starts turning faintly red in embarrassment, tacking on a “You idiot,” at the end to sharpen the blow.

(Too late; Jason is too kind.)

What can a man momentarily-lost but now thoroughly-found say in the face of that, aside from a “Thank you,” out loud and a “You’re certainly damn good at it” inside.

All in all, not bad for half a week’s worth of work. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's that on that! longest fic by far for batmen, fueled by a slightly buck-wild mental state. thanks to [belle](pikachica.tumblr.com) a picture of jason in his shirt + bandanna combo, demonstrating how unbearably sweet one adult-ass man can be. They've got even more Lost At Sea art here! 🙏
> 
> moodboard as chapter title is by [hal](https://succulents-and-fairy-lights.tumblr.com/post/630611715405512704/heres-my-art-for-cetaceans-pls-fic-lost-at-sea), who also illustrated jay and b in the hawaiian shirts they have on for the actual holiday portion of this Hot Mess 🌴 
> 
> please check out both artists and let them know they're good like salt spray in the face on a beach vacation is good c: 
> 
> this fic has been a sandy interpretation of [my sense of self](cetaceans-pls.tumblr.com) the past month or so, and much like bruce the conclusion i've come to is that 1. please take care of yourself and your fellow man, and 2. if feeling shitty or concussed, consider resting in some sun. here's hoping your october comes through for you.

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is split in half to reflect the two very different but Very Powerful moods that occupied me while i was working on it ;) the moods being [Lost At Sea](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNxro4Nn_Ok&feature=youtu.be), and [I'm having a time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIxf5Y0Um3A&feature=youtu.be). shoutout to kuro49 for being the best hypeman you could ever hope to be hyped by god love em
> 
> thanks to the batfam mods for organising this big ass event! and thanks to my betas sul, [fade](https://kuraness.tumblr.com/), and hassan for looking over this! the artwork done in collaboration with this fic are by [belle](https://pikachica.tumblr.com/), [hal](https://succulents-and-fairy-lights.tumblr.com/post/630611715405512704/heres-my-art-for-cetaceans-pls-fic-lost-at-sea), and [fate](), so please be sure to let them know you enjoyed it! 
> 
> next chapter'll be up next week, and as usual ofc stay safe, be kind, and look after yourself and the people around you!


End file.
